Month: April, 2018

This week is a busy one for the Commonwealth, with both the Commonwealth Games coming to a close in Australia and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting being held in London.

The Commonwealth is by any measure a good organisation. It does beneficial work in many different spheres: sport, culture, education, trade, development, and of course in my own field of democracy, good governance and human rights.

The Commonwealth is founded upon a great idea: that nations can achieve sovereignty and equality, while still retaining historical family ties, and while freely co-operating across a wide range of policy areas on matters of common concern. That’s exactly the sort of grown up relationship-of-equals that the Scottish independence movement is trying to create, and the Commonwealth provides a forum and foundation for it.

The Commonwealth’s common values are expressed in the Commonwealth Charter is a fine statement (alongside ECHR) of meta-constitutional principles that should underpin any future Scottish state.

There are moves to make the Commonwealth a slightly stronger and deeper union, or to develop a core ‘Union of Commonwealth Realms’ (the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, but hopefully also including the Caribbean and South Pacific realms) within it. Potentially, such a Union of Commonwealth Realms could have three pillars: (i) freedom of movement between commonwealth realms, with freedom to live, study and work across in any member states; (ii) a broader free trade arrangement between Commonwealth Realms; and (iii) stronger defence and security co-operation.

All of this is, undoubtedly, a Good Thing.

An independent Scotland should be part of any such arrangement, and those who favour Scottish independence should support such moves. A Union of Commonwealth Realms – alongside other institutions like NATO and EFTA – could help to provide the broader, over-arching framework of free movement, free trade, and collective security, upon which a viable Scottish state depends.

The Commonwealth cannot replace the EU or EFTA They are not the same. They have different purposes. The Commonwealth cannot provide a substitute for free trade with continental Europe. As I have written elsewhere, there are limits to what the Commonwealth can do, and limits to the political acceptability of the idea of deeper Commonwealth union (although that might be changing). But the Commonwealth can be more than a useful adjunct. It can be a forum in which Scottish interests are furthered, through which Scotland can make a beneficial contribution to the world, and in which an independent Scotland can continue to co-operate and share with the rUK.

Those in favour of Scottish independence would be wise to drop their squeamishness about the Commonwealth’s imperial past, and embrace it as an organisation for a better future.

The absurdity of making the world a better place by bombing people became clear to me at 4am in a tent near the Iraqi border, as I grabbed my gas mask and ran to the Scud bunker. Perhaps, I thought, rather than bombing people to death, we might find other ways to make peace.

That’s not to say that defence is unnecessary – I cannot hold to a position of strict pacifism. Sometimes evil must be defeated and the weak protected, and sometimes that requires the use of force. But it should be a last resort, not the first response.

Decisions to use force should not be taken lightly.

Robin Cook, the former government minister under Tony Blair who resigned over the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, claims to have secured the right of parliament to decide on war-making. Tony Blair was forced to get a formal parliamentary endorsement of his decision to go to war. I remember sitting in the Wardroom ante-room of HMS NEPTUNE listening to the results of the vote coming in – and a few days later I was on a RAF plane to Kuwait.

Sadly, all of Robin Cooks efforts, appear to have been in vain. Theresa May has ordered the bombing of Syria without explicit parliamentary endorsement. It highlights the fact that a mere ‘convention’ – as we call the unwritten rules of the British Parliamentary system – isn’t worth the paper it isn’t written on. Even a statutory provision can be changed with relative ease by the government of the day, if they have a well-whipped majority.

If you want to secure something, it needs to be entrenched in a written constitution that governments cannot ignore and ordinary parliamentary majorities cannot change at will.

In the words of one of my friends, in relation to the bombing of Syria: “We are dragged into a war by a weak prime minister, without a majority, without evidence, without debate and without a clear end-game.”

Of course the same could be said for Brexit – and for much else besides: decisions made without knowledge, without proper debate and scrutiny, without being forced to think through the consequences.

We are dealing here with a failure of institutions – and ultimately of constitutionalism. At its core, democratic constitutionalism is simply a matter of ensuring that decision-making processes are legitimate, inclusive, deliberative and accountable. A good constitution does not prescribe policy outcomes, but it should ensure – through its rules, procedures and institutional balance of powers – that decisions are made with a mandate, with a majority, with evidence, with debate, and with clear overall objectives.

The unwritten British system, which hides absolutism beneath a pile of absurdities and anachronisms, fails to achieve that. It fails in matters of domestic policy like the grotesque mishandling of Universal Credit and benefits sanctions, which affect the everyday lives of the poorest citizens. It also fails in matters of defence and foreign policy, where the overall standing and reputation of the state is at risk.

Those who defend the unwritten (some would say ‘non-existent’) constitution, on the grounds that ‘it works in practice’ are on ever-shakier ground.

I find the Liberal Democrats a very interesting party, in terms of their role and positioning in British politics. It seems they are caught between three different, often contradictory positions.

Firstly, they try to be a ‘centre’ party, seeking moderation and compromise, looking for the middle ground, avoiding extremes, and taking an ‘equidistant’ position between Labour and the Conservatives.

Secondly, they try to be a ‘liberal’ party, taking an ideologically liberal view on policies based on a philosophy of individualism, choice, freedom and ‘small government’. Sometimes, this leads them into territory that is ‘left’ on social and civil liberties issues, and sometimes it leads them into territory that is to the ‘right’ on economic issues. But in neither case can their position be said to be ‘centrist’. Liberalism is not the middle ground between socialism and capitalism; liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.

Thirdly, they try to be a ‘radical’ party, which appeals to the outsiders, the misfits, and those who are dissatisfied with the political system as a whole. They try to put things on to the political agenda and to change the basis of politics, and in so doing to deal with the issues that the other parties will not touch, or to represent interests that are otherwise. For a long time, they were the only champions of environmentalism. They are the only party to really think about major constitutional change. There’s a strong left-learning stream within the party, people who care about poverty and economic inequality, and who would be nearly socialists, but for the fact that they also value civil liberties and decentralisation, and rightly hate the corrupt, centralising and authoritarian ways of the Labour machine.

All three of these positions are deeply ingrained in the party’s history, culture and identity. But the contradictions between them are never resolved. As the party jostles for some sort of electoral success and political relevance, it is forced to move between these positions – presenting itself as a safe, moderate ‘centre’ party here, an ideologically liberal party there, and a radical challenger of the status quo elsewhere. All this just makes it seem, to the outside observer, fickle, opportunist and untrustworthy.

I’ve been up since 0830 (should have been up at 0730, but slept through my alarm).

Managed to get my daughter to daycare and myself to work by 0930.

Spent most of the morning working mainly on an academic article about constitutions and stuff. Had a quick but surprisingly good lunch, then returned to my article.

At 1745 I went to pick up my daughter, and on the way did shopping – arriving home around 1900.

Discovered my wife was still sick (some bug, but she’s had it for a week and it’s not shaking off easily) and functioning at about 35% capacity.

Sorted out finances – I’d made a double payment by mistake from my Dutch to my UK account – while also somehow playing peek-a-boo.

By that time it was 2000. Time for supper. Ate. Was looking forward to it (steak), but it tasted funny and I think it was a bit off. Ate most of it but felt a bit queasy afterwards. My daughter tucked into banana, yoghurt, Wheetabix and sweetcorn – and seemed to have had a more satisfactory culinary experience.

More playing in the nursery. Tried to encourage and reassure my wife, who gets anxious and depressed when not well.

2130, put daughter to bed. She finally slept at 2245. It horrifies other Northern Europeans, but we are very Spanish about bedtimes.

Put the bins out (many, because last week I overslept and forgot, and they were a bit smelly because the temperature has picked up a bit).

Finally, at 2310, I was able to sit down and have a nice hot cup of tea in peace. And now I need to squeeze in an hour’s writing before bed.

Tomorrow I need to be up at 0700 because I have an early call with Myanmar. So plan on getting at best around 6, maybe nearly 7, hours of sleep.

None of this is either a brag or a complaint. It’s an insight into a typical day.

Of course, materiel requirements stem from strategic policy priorities. So perhaps the first step towards an independent Scottish Navy would be to conduct a Scottish Strategic Defence Review, in an attempt to build a well-informed and forward-looking cross-party political consensus on national defence priorities in the medium term.

When I went to Tuvalu, I took amongst my reading material Sir Arthur Grimble’s ‘A Pattern of Islands’. Grimble joined the Colonial Office in 1913 and began his career as a District Officer in the Gilbert and Ellis Islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu). He ended up as Governor of Jamaica. He recounts how, in his early days in the Colonial Service, junior officers were expected to spend a couple of hours a day ‘in nets’ – that is, practicing their batting and bowling.

On station, one of the first jobs was to create a cricket ground and to teach the natives cricket. They drilled the locally recruited police, clerks and the native magistrates in cricket.

Grimble describes this in some detail. He is of the opinion that the game is a giant teaching exercise – to teach people the value of fair play, sportsmanship and justice. The whole enterprise of training them for self-government, in his view, requires a mastery not only of cricket, but more importantly of the spirit of the game.

In a system that relies on unwritten rules, convention, social norms, traditions etc, this made a certain amount of sense. You cannot operate – or understand – the ‘British constitution’ unless you have a keen sense of what is ‘cricket’ and ‘not cricket’. It’s the same process of gradual acculturation into unwritten rules that underlies cricket, the conventions of parliamentary government, and the operation of the legal system and civil service.

It’s mostly nonsense, of course. The unwritten rules privilege those who know them and exclude those who don’t. They are a barrier to entry. They are vague enough that those in positions of power can choose to ignore them – while pretending not to. I don’t know why I could always see through the sham, when others seemed to be enchanted by it. Perhaps it is a product of having been educated at Edinburgh and Glasgow, not Oxford or Cambridge – I don’t know. But it always seemed to me to be a wholly unsatisfactory way of doing business. It so much better, when it comes to the constitution of the state, the system of government and the rights of citizens, to write it down, be clear and honest, and stick to it.

Yet perhaps there’s a connection – albeit a tenuous one – between the corruption of cricket and the corruption of the polity. I’m not suggesting one causes the other. But ball tampering and political scandals (from ‘cash for questions’ to the recent allegations surrounding Cambridge Analytica) seem to have the same underlying cause: a retreat away from ‘gentlemanly restraint’ as a guide to conduct and a renewed shameless embrace of ‘doing whatever it takes to win’.

We seem to be in an even worse state, under shameless oligarchy than we were under pompous aristocracy.